The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1887-11-16
The Results of Drink.

The results Of the drink trade under its
present conditions are horrifying enough and
sickening enough at home. In the limits Of
one London parish, little exceeding 1000
souls, have personally witnessed how, from
year to year, drink is the cause Of assault, OF
burglary, of suicide, Of hori bl, cruelties, OF
children dying like flies, OF The beating or
aged women by their own drunken sons, of
th, trampling and manning of wives by the
loatkely ruffians whom they call their hus'
bands, but whom drink mad1ens into fiends:
of well-nigh every crime on the dark list of
the calender except the direct shedding OF
blood, and even of that, except that the poor
miserable victims die so slowly that none
call it murder" All this, in the most htera.
sense, have seen going on at our doors, under
the very shadow of the Abbey, and within
bow shot of our great Houses of Legislature.
And when I look from the narrow limits of
one drink afflicted parish-in which yet the
temperance agencies are exceptionally &C
tive, though unavailing, against the
temptation Of glaring pubic-houses in
every street-when look over the world
from China to Peru, find everywhere the
hideous evidences Of the curse caused by
drink. 1t causes tens of thousands OF prema-
ture deaths; it is the most prolific parent OF
all kinds Of disease; it is the commonest cause
of fatal accidents; it yearly produces wide
spread infant mortality; to it is due the
most abject and the most degraded pauper-
ism. In the words of tho late Duke Of Al
bany, it is ''the only deadly enemy England
has to fear 1t is the curse Of the poorest;
the curse of the most miserable of our youths;
the curse Of every home of which it takes
ho,d; the curse of our young colonists all
over the globe; the curse Of every nation and
race with which we come in contact; the
curse Of universal Christendom; the curse
which more powerfully than any other i'm
pedes the progress OF Christianity; the curse
which dogs from land to land and from CLINE
to cline the course Of European civilization.
The reiterated proofs Of these facts are patent
for every one to see. We do do not invent
them; we only point to them. No one can
escape from his share in the responsibility for
this bad state Of things by the cheap, stale,
and irrelevant assertion that Temperance
reformers use Incorporate language" for we
refer them, not to anything which we
have said, but to the neutral annals of the
past, to the careful pages Of contemporary
history, to the colorless records of justice, to
the statistical testimony Of unbiased and
official witnesses, to the Blue Books OF the
Legislature, to the Reports Of Convocation,
to the narratives of all classes OF travellers,
and to the often unwilling admissions OF
traders and physicians And yet, in spite OF
science of men of the world, the conscience
even of protesting Christians, is not only
callous, but hard as the neither milestone to
the guilt and national disgrace which these
facts involve.
The Idle, the Indifferent, and the interested
seem to think that God can be mocked by de-
crepit jests and immoral sophisms When one
hears such gibes repeated for the millionth
time, one feels induced to cry with Cowper:
'sWell spoken, advocate of sin and shame.
Known by thy bleating, Ignorance thy
name!"
Those who care nothing for the anguish OF
mankind, groaning under O curse which MIR.
Gladstone in full House OF Commons, de-
scrbed as more deadly, because more con-
tinuous, than the three great historic
scourges of war, famine and pestilence COM
bined :" think it sufficient to say: because
thou art yirruous shall there be no more
cakes and ales" They forget that Shake
speare puts that question into the mouth Of the
most despicable of his sots, and that, as In his
Casio he shows us how drink can ruin
noble mind, so in his Caliban he pretgures
with prophetic insight the generalization by
drink of the lowest races Have we no fear
lest some even of these, if we suffer them to
recover from their drunkenness, should ex-
claim Of our representatives:
"What thrice-double ass
Was I, to take this drunkard for god
And worship this dull fool"
Canon Fdrrar